Right now I need to place the logos or team colors... :S (To be honest... the logo has been in the model for a while, look for it on the last pic, the challenge may have a prize ) I've managed to get a good result in two ways:

-Strange experiments:

-And Tattoos (One of my personal requirements was to make it full organic and not hand made... tattoos wouldn't fit it, but I've got to get it painted on the model one way or the other):

I really like the pose and the body paint. I like the use of the threedy logo in your 'strange experiments' post. The one with the organic veins oozing out of the triangle. It looks like some kind of plant virus. And if you kind of push it out on the skin it can look kind of like it's growing from underneath better. Did you ever see the animated movie Origin: Spirit of the Past? The half-tree kind of thing reminds me of that.

I think you could probably work more on the human skin texture. Instead of painting it, you could use photos. There's nothing in the rules against that for textures, I believe. It would really make a difference. Actually, all your parts could be enhanced with the use of photos in your textures.

I give up with the painting, tomorrow I'll bake it all and enhance the look in photoshop with some real textures for the skin. Wood, rocks and fur are made of real textures already. I've got a poly planes hair also ready to set, I'll then compare both results because although it might look a bit like plastic, the zbrush one has something I like .

I'm so tired, experience with polypaint tools was awesome, the result is way better than expected from my experience lacked point of view, but still, I'll let it as it is.

Overall experience and learnning curve went exactly as I wanted, way faster than without the hurry of the challenge I think I can make my own poly models now, next thing is to learn: animation

And who knows, maybe I can use my own characters in my games That would be great!!

Good luck to you all guys! We ended up with some cool entries from 3Dtotal. There are 2 o 3 that i specially like. Mine.. I had to finish it, but I'm not happy at all with my low poly I'll do better next time!!!

Congrats for your finish man, I was a bit off those last weeks (moving my place) so couldn't see last evolution of threedy's power.

The evolution of your character is quite interesting, there is always something to add in a chara work like some belt or weapon as accesories.
You've been doing some valuables efforts for the texturing steps, it's looking pretty realistic imo, the integration of materias is not something easy, not bad but you can even push the mix further with lill' elements or third party.
Black skin seems popular this war, like choice and originality, would have dig the punk a bit more.

I think that the "I'm not happy with my entry" mood is something a lot of people share at the end of a comp'. I think that it means you've made a progress while learning and comparing your work with the community.
Maybe next time you'll go further on your work, on the way you choose to, that's the use of this big mess.

I hope that you've achieved your goals on this comp', good luck with judging steps, what could be important here, for yourself, is looking the way you've been walking on, and think about what you'll change or push next time depending of your critical choices.

Congratulations on finishing up, this is definitely a tough competition to get through

I agree with Waska I think your character definitely evolved a lot through the last 2 months, and that no doubt reflects on the progress you've personally made on building a full character from scratch.

Good luck on the voting, and congrats again on finishing!

__________________
The only way to define the limitations of our existence is to go beyond them.

I saw myself rethinking a lot of ideas that I didn't get to work as I planned. That's part of the learning, experience helps you decide which designs may work and which may not.

I'm so proud, it's the very first time I texture a model, my very first experience with tangent space normals, light setups, rendering engines.

I've learnt a lot, and sharing this time with the ppl of the forums has been quite a huge addon to the whole experience. I've always watched the bulls from the barrier and taking part in the action was awesome.

Next time will be way different. The aim of finishing and taking part in the comp is the greatest success of the last months in terms of personal satisfaction. Knowing I could have done better is quite stimulating aswell for the future

I had fun with my spare time, that's the important thing at the end.

Thanks for following up, for the crits, the encouraging words... to you, Washka, Puckducker and everyone else who stept by and left their 2cents.
Good luck with you great works.... some of you gys are inspiring